Pedestrian View

This Markus Zusak (I’m thinking pen name) 2002 book won the American Library Association’s Michael L. Prinz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.  There’s a big silver P on the cover.  I read it on the recommendation of a friend and her daughter, thinking it might be worth including in my Adolescent Lit course this summer.

It’s not a bad book, but I don’t know if it deserved the P, unless that’s a letter grade.  The plot was innovative:  lonsome loser receives mysterious playing card with mysterious message which, after some head scratching, leads loser become the “messenger” to various people in need.  The book divides into four parts - one for each suit - with each part containing 13 chapters.  This is clever, but strikes me as the novelist equivalent of a sonnet.  He’s gotta write that 13th chapter whether there’s anything to write about or not.

Anyway, the first chapter is great.  We’re introduced to a group of engaging and cynical young characters lying on the floor in the middle of a whacked bank robbery.  From there, though, it slogs through 52 obligatory chapters (actually more - did I mention the Joker?) that get preachier and preachier.  In the process, we get a steady trickle of pop cultural references from the Proclaimers to the Drew Carey Show that ring pretty hollow - like a slow dose of Zusak’s MySpace Favorites.

To be fair, it’s not a bad book.  There were a couple of nights where I stayed up reading later than I ought.  There are some great characters like Keith and Daryl, classic thugs that show up to clarify the various kryptic messages on the cards.  They have clarifying fists, and eat meat pies.  Another favorite is our protagonist’s coffee drinking, stinking dog, the Doorman.  Another charming trait is it’s Austrailian setting, which is never actually mentioned, but shows up in details like the above mentioned meat pies, the heat of Christmas, and off hand references to things like roundabouts (no vegamite sandwiches or trysts with sheilas, though).

It’s clearly got a message, and that may be the reason for P.

I have some experience with what Dave grapples with in this piece.  I’m a man.  I have a wife, Sherry.  Sherry asks me regularly about her hair.  Writes Barry, “If you’re a man, and a woman asks you how she looks, you’re in big trouble.

Back in 1987, there was one perm Sherry got that I didn’t particularly care for; otherwise, her hair looks great (to me) all the time.  It’s brown and soft and sits serenely atop her head like a sweet songbird’s nest on a warm June evening (you’re right - I should say no to the poetry).  To her, however, her hair doesn’t look great, or at least she’s uncertain about how it looks in some respect because we keep coming back to the same conversation.

“Do you like my hair this way?”

Like Barry, I’m trapped, only she doesn’t get upset with me like Barry’s wife apparantly does; Sherry just doesn’t believe me.  If I say, “It looks great,” she rolls her eyes at me because, though she keeps asking for it, she knows my opinion is worthless.  Still, it’s the answer I stick with because the alternatives are not pretty.

Ultimately, Barry’s observations about the differences between how the sexes groom themselves, and how they obsess (or don’t obsess) about it, have a ring of truth to them.  I also applaud him for acknowledging the roll that Barbie has played in this phenomenon. 

As a father of three daughters, the beauty obsession also concerns me as they mature.  So far, they seem to be sensible about it, but I know that a beauty obsession can lead to serious health and mental health issues.  While Barry’s piece is funny, it points us toward the more serious issues that our culture’s beauty obsession has for women.

In the mean time, I’ve scheduled an appointment with my barber for tomorrow.  This hair is driving me crazy!

OK, so everyone else was reading this eight years ago.  It’s true, my reading list is behind the curve.  I get around to the hot books somewhere between eight and forty years after my sister’s book club.  My reading list is determined more by what I trip over than what I intentionally set out to read.

That aside, Alexander McCall Smith’s tale of Mma Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective, lived up to all expectations and didn’t suffer for the wait.  I’ve been hearing about this series for years, and sometimes that buildup can be deadly, but not so here.  There’s a beautiful simplicity and directness about Mma Ramotswe’s character.  The book is rather like a bunch of short stories, but in the end there’s one major case that unifies the novel, and in the process, we get a very whistful portrait of Botswana, and Africa in a general.  It has the sweetness of The Gods Must be Crazy - also a Botswana tale - without all the white people getting in the way.  Of course, Smith is pretty darned white, but somehow he accomplishes a very non-Western feel.  I suppose a real Setswana would write a very different novel (and probably has).

My favorite moments were when a snake climbs up into the engine compartment of her van, and when she doesn’t fire her receptionist even when there’s nothing for her to do and she’s losing money hand over fist, because what kind of detective agency doesn’t have a receptionist?

There’s also the sensible sexiness of large African women to jar our American ideals of beauty.  It all goes down very nice with a fresh mug of bush tea.

Remember those goals that were due Week 4?  Rewrite them, or copy and paste them, into a blog entry.  Update them if they need updating. 

To write something, from your Dashboard, choose Write.

• Under Write, choose Write Post
• Title your post (in this case Goals)
• Remember to choose your category (in this case FYE 1000) from the category menu on the right.

From your Dashboard, choose Manage. 

• Under Manage, choose Categories. 
• There, choose Create New Category.
• Create a category called FYE 1000.
• Create other categories that you might see yourself using.  For example, if you’re into music and you can see yourself writing about music, create a Music category.

At my semi-annual dental checkup last week, I put my hygenist to the test.  She and her kind have been harping about flossing for decades.  I heed the brow-beating each time, too.  Authority figures in flowery smocks make me termble.  I heed them for about a week; then my memory fades and my flossing goes down the tube. 

A year or so ago, she showed me a short video (comfortable seating) about Perry O’Dontle disease, and it was terrifying.  Perry was connected to a list of certified killers - heart disease, diabetes, athlete’s foot and others (who can remember them all).  He reminded me of Perry O’Parsons, the crooning alter ego of Perry Smith (cold blooded killer of the Clutter family of Holcolm, Kansas in 1959 - see In Cold Blood below). The andedote to Perry?  Floss. 

So simple.

I vowed to floss.  I was determined.  I quit within a week.

This fall, however, I began to have some real hot and cold sensitivity.  A glass of water made me wince.  A spoonful of soup sent me through the ceiling.  I asked my daughter Maia to google “tooth sensitivity” one day, and 15 seconds later, she uttered, “It just talks about Perry O’Dontle…”  That’s all I heard.

I went downstairs and began flossing.

In truth, I’ve kept it up for 3 months, which brings me to my little hygenist test.  The temperature sensitivity had gone away, and I was pretty sure flossing was helping, but I wanted to see if she noticed, so I didn’t brag about flossing like one might expect when I sat down in the chair.  Sure enough, she passed.  After about two minutes of poking around in my mouth with sharp and hissing instruments, she asked, “Have you been flossing?”

She’s pretty sharp, that one.  She gave me a gold star.  I have a new respect for both her and floss. 

Now my wife, who doesn’t floss, claims that the hygenist also congratulated her on her flossing.  She claims she just played along.  I may have to take her gold star since it wasn’t earned each night with a slipping and popping piece of string.  I also worry about her relationship with Perry O’Dontle.

I’ve asked my Comp 1 and Intro to College students to start blogs this week.  I didn’t really explain why very well.

If you’re a Comp 1 student, your blog is primarily a place to do some journalling, but in a fairly public setting.  Starting next week, you’ll be required to post at least once a week.  The post should be at least 150 words and can be about whatever you want, at first.  Later, I may give you some directed topics - responses to things we read, for example.  In addition, I’ll ask you to reply to at least two of your peers’ blogs each week.  That way an audience gets manufactured.  I may think of other ways to use this blog.  You never know…

If you’re an Intro to College student, then your blog is a place where you’ll post some documents to help you make good decisions as you move toward completing a program of some kind.  For starters, you’ll put some goals here.  Later, we’ll check up on you to see if you’ve met any of your goals.  You might create a resume here.  You might do some career planning here.  You might post something I haven’t thought of here.  You never know…

Anyway, welcome!  Stay tuned.